reading "Old Friend from Far Away" by Natalie Goldberg

Started reading “Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of writing memoir” by Natalie Goldberg last night. I should have remembered that it would be a quick read with lots and lots of writing exercises. Practically every page is an exercise. Of course I wasn’t doing the exercises as I went. I was sitting just outside the door of my daughter’s art class. It was her first class and she was nervous- new place, new teacher, new classmate.. yup, just one classmate so far. Anyway I was able to read 70-80 pages during the hour or so that I was there. It is a very different read than the other book I just read (about how to write a novel). Since I have read other books by Natalie Goldberg, and also taken a couple of classes where her materials were used by the teacher I feel like I know a lot of what is in the book already. It’s a little disappointing. It’s good stuff, and it’s good to have it in one place, but I’m not getting anything earth-shattering out of it so far. Nothing is jumping out at me that makes me scream “OH! That’s it!!” It’s kind of like “yeah, I know that already...” but maybe when I read the book again more slowly and take the time to do the exercises some good will come from it. I did actually buy this book so I can go back and re-read it whenever I am ready.